Today we started our day off pretty early by hike to Sierra Negra. Sierra Negra is a shield volcano that spans 10.4 km wide. The Sierra Negra is the second biggest shield volcano in the world, and it had last erupted in 2005. Predicting when a volcano erupts is nearly impossible right now, but it is actually though that animals are able to sense these natural disasters are coming. I was also interested to realize that it is not the whole volcano that erupts it is just different parts or sections of the volcano that erupts. The volcano erupts when there is a lot of built up pressure underneath and then the weak spot is where the eruption will occur. Learning about Sierra Negra was very interesting and also crazy to think that we have no clue when this volcano is going to explode, and it could have exploded when we were there. When hiking up to the volcano we were surrounded by many different plant species like ferns and Guava trees. Guava trees are actually an invasive species in the Galapagos, but they cannot get rid of them. This is because if you use pesticides on them it will kill the endemic plants or if you cut them down their seeds will spread.
Guava Tree
Sierra Negra
After our hike we had lunch in the hotel and had a little bit of free time to do anything we want and then had to meet back at the hotel by 2:30 to head to our back tour that went up to the wall of tears. The beginning of the bike tour started off slightly easy and we got to a place where we thought we were done and ready to walk to the wall. Little did we know we still had five kilometers to go of hills and bumps. It was such a struggle, but we made it after about 30 minutes. The Wall of Tears was built by prisoner, who in some case were not in prison for very bad things. The prisoners were forced to carry rocks for five miles to build this wall which had no purpose other than to keep them busy. The wall of tears was built from 1946 till 1959, which resulted in the death of many of these prisoners. We then biked back to the hotel which so much more relaxing and enjoyable than the way there. We saw many giant tortoises, marine iguanas, and finches. On the way up to the Wall of Tears we all decided that we would call this bike ride the Bike Trail of Tears which was a very good name for the bike trail that we had gone through.
Wall of Tears
Extra Research
Wall of Tears The wall of tears was built through the 1940s and 1950s by prisoners. The wall was built by hand by these prisoners who sent to Isabela island because it was basically impossible for them to escape. There was no real purpose of making this wall other than to put the prisoners to work. Many locals believe the wall is haunted and they say "you can hear the wailing and crying of those who perished during its construction" https://www.galakiwi.com/blog/the-wall-of-tears-in-the-galapagos-islands/